GLASGOW will host the first official safer drug consumption room in Britain following a landmark decision by the city’s health chiefs today.

The facility will allow people using illegal drugs, such as heroin, to take them in hygenic conditions with medical support at hand. 

Such facilities have been seen to aid in cutting drug deaths and harm in places such as Portugal over recent decades.

Not a single death has ever been recorded in a safe consumption room worldwide, and it is hoped that bringing one to Scotland will help the country shake off its label as the drug death capital of Europe.

Seven years after Glasgow’s Health and Social Care Partnership (GHSCP) first proposed safe consumption as a response to both a rise in HIV infection and drug-related fatalities in the city, health chiefs have now finally approved opening a £2.3 million facility in Hunter Street in the city’s east end.

The seven-year wait had been marked by legal wrangles to protect staff and users from arrest, and by and constitutional battles over devolution of drug law.

The turning point came last month, when Lord Advocate Dorothy Bain KC, after two years of deliberation, stated that the prosecution of staff or drug users in a safe consumption room would not be “in the public interest.”

Formally moving the paper to set up the facility today, GHSCP chairwoman Rona Sweeney told the meeting: “I’m sure we all wish our city didn’t need this facility, but the reality is that we do.”

Drugs minister Elena Whitham has backed the board’s decision with a pledge that the Scottish government will fund its £2.3m a year running costs.

She said: “We know this is not a silver bullet.

“But we know from evidence from more than 100 facilities worldwide that safer drug consumption facilities work.”